Knowledge, evolution, facts and fictions

The reason in things

“I set my mind to inquire and search
for the reason in things...” - Ecclesiastes 7: 25 (New English
Bible translation, 1970).

We humans are ever restless, ever
searching, ever digging for knowledge in the hope of finding “the
truth”, or at least the answer to today's problem, whatever that
might be. Other animals might “know” stuff, might even be aware
that they know, but it is humans who question their knowing, who
continually ask the further questions about how and why and what for?

So when we look at the night sky, for
example, we enjoy the beauty of the stars, but we go on, like the
Psalmist, to ask ourselves more, ask ourselves something about how we
fit into this universe, however we might conceive it.

“When I look up at the heavens, the
work of thy fingers

the moon and the stars set in their
places by thee, what is man that thou shouldst remember him,

mortal man that thou shouldst care for
him?

crowning him with glory and honour.”

Psalm 8 (New English Bible translation, 1970)

These lines by the Psalmist, whoever he
was, seem to capture something of the the ambivalent responses of
religious teaching to the place of humanity in nature, in a similar
way that the careers of two deeply contrasting figures in Renaissance
Florence do. These differences echo down the centuries and still have
power to evoke strong and competing feelings among believers and
non-believers alike.

The contrast and conflict is around
knowledge – what do we know as humans, and how can we be sure of
our knowledge? And how do we speak about what we know, what is the
most appropriate language in which to express our knowledge?

Girolamo Savonarola. Image from Wikipedia

Galileo Galilei. Image from Wikipedia

The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli. Is this an example of what Savonarola would have burnt in the Bonfire of the Vanities?

The ancient people viewed the earth as a round table whose pillars descended injto the ocean. In the uppermost part were the Heavens, or the Highest Heavens, the dwelling place of God. Image: Christian Community Bible, Claretian Publications, 1993

Aristarchus's 3rd century BC calculations on the relative sizes of from left the Sun, Earth and Moon, from a 10th century AD Greek copy. Image Wikipedia

The Copernican heliocentric system. Image Wikipedia

Savonarola and Galileo

This conflict about knowledge is at the
base of the continuing and rather fruitless debate between
creationism and evolution. It is a conflict of language, essentially
a conflict of metaphors not morality, a difference of the language
used to speak about what we know.

Renaissance Florence was the site of
one of the earliest expressions of this conflict in relatively modern
times, epitomised by the figures of Dominican priest Girolamo
Savonarola and scientist Galileo Galilei, and their respective fates
at the hands of the dominant cultural force of their times, the Roman
Catholic Church.

Savonarola, born in Ferrara in 1452,
came to Florence for the first time in 1482 and again, after an
absence of several years, in 1490, at which time he began to preach
highly-charged sermons against what he saw as the excesses of the
Renaissance, the great opulence of the wealthy who spent lavishly on
art to enhance their own glory at a time when many in Italy were
struggling against extreme poverty. He also preached against the
corruption of many of the clergy.

The fervour of his preaching, his
apocalyptic vision, led to denunciations of “decadent” art as
well as homosexuality, making it a capital offence in previously more
liberal Florence. By 1497 Savonarola was organising the “Bonfire of
the the Vanities” - public burnings of books and art works that he
believed were immoral, as well as mirrors, women's hats, musical
instruments, chess pieces and more.

Eventually the Church authorities tired
of his attacks and hauled him before a commission on charges of
heresy. He was tortured and sentenced to death. On 24 May 1498 he was
burned at the stake along with two of his colleague priests.

Galileo, who according to Stephen
Hawking, “perhaps more than any other single person, was
responsible for the birth of modern science," was born in Pisa
in the Duchy of Florence in 1564. The family relocated to Florence
about two years later.

In 1610 Galileo made an observation,
using a telescope he had made himself, of four bodies around the
planet Jupiter, an observation that was to overthrow the geocentric
model of the universe that had held sway in science and philosophy
for millennia. The four bodies seen by Galileo were the moons of
Jupiter, now called Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

Galileo was in fact not the first to
propose a heliocentric model – the Greek philosopher Aristarchus of
Samos had proposed a similar one in the Second Century BCE, and
nearer to his own time Copernicus also proposed such a model. The
difference between these earlier models and that of Galileo is that
his was based on direct observation and not deduced from a
mathematical hypothesis.

In his writings Galileo strongly
supported Copernicus's model and was denounced by the Church
authorities who based their rejection of Galileo's position on
Biblical texts such as 1 Chronicles 16: 30 which states : “He (God)
has fixed the earth firm, immovable,” and Ecclesiastes 1: 5: “The
sun rises and the sun goes down; back it returns to its place and
rises there again.”

It was deemed heresy to suggest that
the earth was not the immovable centre of the universe around which
all the other heavenly bodies rotated. Galileo first came under
attack for his views in 1614 when Fr Tommaso Caccini OP preached a
sermon in Florence denouncing the heliocentric view.

At first the Church authorities allowed
heliocentrism to be taught as a hypothesis, though not as the truth,
but by early 1615 the Inquisition, in the person of Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine had been drawn into the controversy. Bellarmine wrote in a
letter that to teach that heliocentrism was “physically real”
would be "a very dangerous thing,
likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and
theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy
Scripture as false."

In 1632
Galileo published the Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems ,
in which a plodding supporter of a geocentric view is wittily
outsmarted by a supporter of the heliocentric position. The book was
highly popular with the people, but it aroused grave suspicion on the
part of many powerful churchmen.

Galileo was hauled before a panel of
influential theologians who found him guilty of heresy. He was
sentenced to house arrest in spite of having agreed, in the face of
burning at the stake, to recant his views on
heliocentrism.

The legend that he muttered “Eppur si
muove” (“and yet it moves”) as he left the trial venue is rejected by most historians as
just that, a legend.

Two ways of knowing

“The history of scientific ideas, like the history of other ideas, is a moving army of metaphors - some more general than others, but literalness is the enemy of scientific progress.” - Robert Young (1989)

What these two great figures of history and of Florence symbolise is
the two ways we have have of knowing – the formal and the
empirical.

Of these two ways of knowing only the
former, formal knowledge, is capable of incontrovertible proof.
Formal knowledge is that kind of knowledge which is defined by the
“rules of the game”, as it were. We can prove that an aunt is
female, because the rules of language tell us that a sister of my
father or my mother is called an “aunt” - this is perhaps
complicated by the fact that an “aunt” can become an “uncle”
by means of an operation, but that does not change the “fact”
that an “aunt” is female.

Similarly, the rules of the
International Rugby Board (IRB) state that a “try” (the
equivalent, I believe, of a “touchdown” in American Football) is
worth five points in the game of football administered by the IRB. We
can “prove” this value by turning to the relevant rule.

An implication of this is that the
rules can be changed. Indeed, when I was a schoolboy the rules gave
the value of a try as three points (reflected in the Afrikaans term
for a try, which was “'n drie”, meaning literally “a three”).
The IRB changed the point value of a try to five points in 1992, so
now in Afrikaans a “three” is actually worth five!

The point is that the “fact” of the
point value of a try is easily “proved” - just look it up in the
rule book.

Empirical knowledge can never be proved
in the same way – there is no book of rules to turn to, only the
evidence provided by empirical observation. Every observer is likely
to see things from his or her point of view, and so variations of
observations are possible.

The Scientific Method has developed
over centuries to provide rules for observation which reduce the
impact of the point of view of the observer. This means that
empirical knowledge can be shown to be “reliable” when the
observation as carried out under the rules by another person has
pretty much the same result.

If the observation is carried out in
terms of a theory, and tends to confirm the theory, it is said to
“support” the theory, not to “prove” it. For example, the
theory of gravity is a theory which attempts to explain the
observation that, at least on planet Earth, an object will “fall”
until it comes to rest where it can fall no further, and further,
that bodies or particles are attracted to one another, dependent on their respective masses. The theory is
used to explain the orbits of planets around the sun, but it cannot
be “proved” but observations can be made which support it as an
explanatory theory.

The theory of gravitation was first formalised by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687: “I deduced that the forces which keep the planets in their orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the
Earth; and found them answer pretty nearly.”

General relativity has already surpassed or superseded gravity as an explanatory theory. Which does not reduce the pain of falling off a ladder!

A definition of evolution

(Evolution is) "The theory the existing varieties of plant and animal, so far from having existed more or less unmodified from the beginning of biological time, have come into being through a progressive diversification that has accompanied their biogenetic descent from their anscestors." - from The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, edited by Allan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass (Fontana, 1977).

Evolution is a fact

Get over it! Evolution is a fact. By this I mean simply that all living things, ourselves included, are in a process of evolution. This theory has been supported by countless observations using the rules of the Scientific Method, over the century and a half since Charles Darwin first published his masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Evolution cannot be "proved" in the same way as the points value of a try in IRB rugby football can be "proved" or that an aunt must be female. It is also not relevant demand to demand such "proof" from the theory.

Evolution has been described by those
who, for whatever reasons they might have, oppose it, as a “hoax”,
as “just a theory”, as a “lie”. It has even been described
as a religion.

Much of this is due to misunderstanding
of the terms used in the debate, especially the terms “theory”,
“fact” and “proof”. As one who is not a scientist I want to
try to unravel these terms and thereby, I hope, to contribute to a
deeper understanding of what constitutes human knowledge, and why
such an understanding is necessary.

Charles Darwin

Darwin on "Natural Selecction"

'Several
writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural
Selection. Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such
variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its
conditions of life. No one objects to agriculturists speaking of the
potent effects of man's selection; and in this case the individual
differences given by nature, which man for some object selects, must
of necessity first occur. Others have objected that the term
selection implies conscious choice in the animals which become
modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants have no
volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! In the literal
sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term; but
who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of
the various elements? - and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to
elect the base with which it in preference combines. It has been said
that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but
who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as
ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant
and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost
necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying
the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and
product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as
ascertained by us. With a little familiarity such superficial
objections will be forgotten' (Darwin, 1895, On
the Origin of Species ,pp. 58-9).

Theory

To start the investigation with the
word “theory” a good beginning is, as with most such attempts at
understanding, to look up the word in a reputable dictionary.
Dictionaries can give us something to work, something to start with.
For example, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED) gives this
definition of “theory”: “A supposition or a system of ideas
intended to explain something, especially one based on general
principles independent of the thing to be explained.”

Webster (1976), on the other hand,
gives a more detailed set of options, of which number 4 is perhaps
most relevant to this enquiry: “A judgment, conception,
proposition, or formula (as relating to the nature, action, cause of
origin of a phenomenon or group of phenomena) formed by speculation
or deduction or by abstraction or generalisation from facts.” or “a
hypothetical entity or structure explaining or relating an observed
set of facts.”

The purpose of theory is to explain, to
elucidate, to give structure to, the myriad observations made in the
course of our search for knowledge. The more a theory is able to
explain, the more it is supported by observations, the more powerful
it is.

On the basis of these criteria
evolution is a very powerful theory indeed. Can the same be said for
creationism or its thinly-disguised successor, Intelligent Design
(ID)? Well, only if one accepts the “Book of Rules” on which they
are based.

Creationism and ID are predicated on
the “truth” of the creation account found in the Book of Genesis,
which means that they are cases of formal knowledge, much like the
formal knowledge we have of the points value of a try in rugby
football. The IRB rules tell us that a try is worth five points and
we cannot say that is untrue because the rules of American football
say that a touchdown is worth six points. One cannot argue against
the decision of a referee in rugby by using the rule book of soccer.

Formal knowledge relies on “rules of
the game”, empirical knowledge relies on observations explained by
theories. The attempt to invalidate the theory of evolution by means
of an appeal to the Bible is therefore logically unsound and based on
a misapprehension of the purposes of the two forms of knowledge.

To state it again, has the theory of
evolution been proved? No, it has not, and it does not require proof.
It is validated by the countless scientific observations
which support it.

Theories, as we have already seen in
the case of the theory of gravitation, tend to be modified over time
as more and more observations are made and new information comes to
light. The theory of evolution has, in the time since Darwin, already
been modified many times. This does not in any way invalidate it as a
theory of great explanatory value. The basic premise of the theory,
that living things evolve in the process of adaptation to
environmental factors, remains “true”, that is, “reliable”.

Facts

My friend the COED gives the following
definition of a “fact”: “a thing that is indisputably the
case.”

That is why in science empirical
observations are seldom termed “facts” - they are almost always
open to interpretation, and there is always the possibility that new,
more accurate observations might show something different.

The built-rules of verification in the
Scientific Method help to reduce the possibility of error and bias,
but can never completely do away with them. The more times an
observation is made by different researchers, the more “reliable”
the observation is deemed to be.

Proof

Here again the COED gives some useful
information: a proof is “evidence establishing a fact or the truth
of a statement.”

In the Scientific Method the issue is
not so much proof as reliability. The reliability of an observation
is given by the way the observation is done. If it is done in such a
way that another person doing the observation under the same
conditions in the same way would achieve the same result, then the
observation is deemed to be reliable.

In formal knowledge the proof is
relatively easy – check the rules! The rules clearly establish the
fact that a try is worth five points, or that God created the world
in six days and rested on the seventh.

The problem is that many want to judge
evolution using rules that come from another game. They want to apply
the formal knowledge process to the empirical knowledge process.
That's like trying to play chess with the rules of tiddley-winks,
and, when it doesn't work, declaring that chess is therefore invalid,
a hoax, a lie, and so on.

And we are back to the situation
Galileo found himself in – he could see the evidence that the world
went around the sun, an observation which validated Copernicus's
theory, but that was against the rules which stated that God had
placed the earth in the centre and he had to bow down to that “truth”
or be burnt at the stake. Tough decision.

Drawing (not to scale) of the Solar System. Image from Wikipedia

Evolution

"It is naive to suppose that the acceptance of evolution theory depends upon the evidence of a number of so-called 'proofs'; it depends rather upon the fact that the evolutionary theory permeates and supports every branch of biological science, much as the notion of the roundness of the earth underlies all geodesy and all cosmological theories on which the shape of the earth has a bearing. Thus anti-evolutionism is of the same stature as flat-earthism." - from the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, edited by Allan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass (Fontana, 1977).

Discussion

Why is all this so important and why do so many on both sides of the argument get so heated about it?

The issue is the same as the one faced by Galileo - to advance our understanding of ourselves and the world around us we need more and more reliable information. Since the Age of Enlightenment this has been achieved chiefly through the application of the Scientific Method.

On the other hand there are those who, for whatever reasons, seem to have a vested interest in maintaining the truth of a set of rules for which they claim a "higher" truth. This "truth" can never be validated except by an appeal to the relevant rules and where these rules seem to contradict what is being uncovered by science, then a moral judgement is passed on science.

While burnings at the stake do not happen very frequently any more, there are other forms of punishment meted out to those who dare to go against the "higher truth" of the "revealed Word of God". They are called "liars" and other nasty things.

But more importantly the application of irrelevant rules to the search for knowledge tends to hold us back, indeed can turn us back to the Dark Ages where the only permissable knowledge was that decreed by the authorities.

This sort of "know-nothing" attitude would have us call into question our own powers of observation, our own independence of thought. And to whose benefit would that be?

This is a crucial question because it might give us some clues as to why people are so virulently opposed to the advance of knowledge. I'm not sure but I would guess that there are issues of power involved.

In an essay entitled "Literature and meaning in life"in the book Meaning in Life (edited by Michael Macnamara, Ad Donker, 1987) Professor of English Ridley Beeton from the University of South Africa wrote:

"Man has, in many ways, been misled by an anthropomorphic sense of primacy. Those who have seen the continual improvements within the race or society certaihnly have not held this idea of an anthropomorphic perfection: it would make the world, man, God - or a Primal Cause - all too little. Improvement, idealism, has in its way been the road of meaning; the settled state of perfection has not. Even those who are held by a strongly orthodox religion knowe that the perfection of the earth lies in its imperfection, and that 'God' is much more than the image maker of man." (Italics in the original)

Perhaps it is the threat to the "anthropomorphic sense of primacy" - the belief in the "special creation" of humanity that is the cause of the highly emotional opposition to evolution. But by the same token, that very opposition reduces man to the vassal of some supernatural being or force, at the mercy of instead of in control of, his or her own destiny.

We need to be able to separate formal knowledge from empirical knowledge and not try to maintain the fiction that texts written thousands of years ago can tell us more reliably about our world and ourselves than the findings of the Scientific Method.

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The text and all images on this page, unless otherwise indicated, are by Tony McGregor
who hereby asserts his copyright on the material. Should you wish to
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AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

6 years agofrom South Africa

Gingersmaltese - I think I specifically mentioned in this Hub that proof is not possible. The evidence either supports or does not support the theory and in the case of evolution there is plenty of evidence, and not only in the fossil record, which supports the theory.

Love and peace

Tony

sierra

6 years ago

i think u will like the books

gingersmaltese

7 years agofrom 27597

Evolution is a historical science, NOTHING can be proven a fact using historical science, you can only show degrees of probability. Its quite humorous to me when and evolutionist claims evolution is PROVEN FACT since that's an impossibility using the methods of historical science. You cannot test Macro-evolution because you don't have the millions of years you claim necessary, you cant show Macro-evolution because there are no intermediate fossils. You cant convincingly show a degree of probability using historical science in my opinion, and that's exactly the problem with historical science, its to dependent on opinions, i don't see the historical evidence but you do, so who's correct? If were going to start being intellectually honest here we need to drop this "PROVEN FACT", illusion.

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Dave - thanks for that info. I am not that well informed about the Beatles, a gap in my education! Thanks for coming back.

Love and peace

Tony

Dave McClure

8 years agofrom Kyle, Scotland

Tony - the Rose & Valerie line is from the Beatles' song 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' on the White Album. I also gave up on that "discussion", and for the same reasons!

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Dave - "Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery" - what a marvellous saying! There seems to me to have been a lot of "screaming from the gallery" around here recently! The difficulty of maintaining circumspection and consideration in the face of the "steadfast refusal to understand the nature of objective knowledge" has led me to bow out of the recent "discussion". There is little point, I think, in trying to shed some light in the face of determined obscurantism.

Thanks for your considered and reasoned comment, which I very much appreciate.

Love and peace

Tony

Dave McClure

8 years agofrom Kyle, Scotland

Hi Tony - Not sure how I missed this one till now. The problem we have when appealing to reason is that reason tends to make us circumspect and considered in what we say, while blind faith is just 'Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery'. A steadfast refusal to understand the nature of objective knowledge is kind of hard to defeat!

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Baileybear - thanks so much for your kind words. Our access to knowledge and information is great, but they had great minds with powerful imaginations. They did so much for us all in thinking things through and paving the way for freedom!

Thanks again

Love and peace

Tony

Baileybear

8 years ago

Beautifully written hub, Tony. I think it is quite remarkable that people like Galileo and Darwin made such ground-breaking contributions to early science, given that they did not have access to the wealth of information we have these days.

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

James - well, I don't know of any scientist who has tried to tell me (or anyone else, for that matter!) that I am "descended from a monkey"! That is a rather silly charicature of the theory of evolution. As for "proof", the main point of this Hub is to say that to demand "proof" of evolution is an invalid and irrelevant demand. No theory is subject to proof - it can be either supported or not supported by evidence - and there is plenty of evidence in support of the theory of evolution.

So no, I don't have "faith" in evolution, I accept it as a valid explanation, supported by much evidence, of how life as we know it today, came about.

The revealed origin of the world in which you have faith comes from creation stories written by people in books. The story only has validity in terms of one's acceptance of the validity of the books. And to use the story as written in the book of Genesis to counter the theory of evolution is a little like applying the rules of American football to a game of rugby.

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a such a thoughtful comment.

Love and peace

Tony

James A Watkins

8 years agofrom Chicago

You did a great job explicated all of this. There is absolutely zero proof that any species ever evolved into another species. Is there evolution of characterstics within a species? Well, of course. You must have faith in the scientist who tells you you descended from a monkey just as I must have faith that God has revealed the origin of the world as His Creation. Neither of us can prove it. We can have faith in something, or faith in nothing. You choose. And so shall I.

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Mysterylady - thanks for coming by. I appreciate your comment and so glad that you found this Hub (and me!).

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Marliza - thanks for stopping by and leaving such a thoughtful comment! You have given me food for thought.

Love and peace

Tony

mysterylady 89

8 years agofrom Florida

I decided to read this because I enjoyed your excellent comment on James Watkins' hub on education.

This is a great hub, very well developed and interesting. Of course, I rated it up. It brought back memories of teaching about Savonarola and his book burning as well as the treatment of Galileo.

Marliza Gunter

8 years agofrom South Africa

hmm..knowledge is power..I too seek knowledge, but I make my studies into the Creator Himself...my philosophy..if I could get my mind around God, then I would have all the knowledge I need since He is the source and contain all knowledge (including evolution) within Him...

God is Science...to study exactly what God is (Spirit) and how it moves, talks, and conduct power...it is said that atoms is not a solid structure, but particles held together by energy, thus nothing we know as solid is in truth solid, it is said that atoms vibrate, thus moving and not solid...now..what is God?

lol..(smiling)..then you should see with your own eyes the evolution difference between those living on the earth and those living in heaven and overpowered by God's Glory and Love...the wisdom, love, insight, patience and strength of those people are astounding, just awesome...their immaculate virtues, articulate fine manners, and the most heartfelt hospitality... :)

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Franto - thank you so much for the supportive comment. I appreciate it very much indeed!

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Li - thanks for the visit and the very kind words!

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Pete - thanks so much for your comment.

Love and peace

Tony

f_hruz

8 years agofrom Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Congratulations to an outstandig hub providing great educational value and enjoyment, only wasted on religious pin heads like Captain Jimmy whos hub is a sad joke in contrast to the work of art and reason you have produced.

Great hub Tony and well said MartieCoetser. I too believe that the books of the Bible were written under the inspiration of God (Holy Spirit) but that they need to be interpreted as having been written when mankind had a limited view and knowledge of the universe. As you point out Martie much of the story of creation in the Bible needs to be seen in the light of symbolism or metaphors. I am constantly amazed by the number of intelligent Christians who argue the creationism point of view.

You are so right about having to try to understand the culture and world-views of people in ancient historical times to understand fully what they were thinking and writing about.

I was not aware of Jonker's book but will look out for it now that you have alerted me to it. Thanks for that and for your great comment.

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Rob - the creationism propaganda machine is working very hard! I'm not sure what is happening to science except to say that possibly the power of money and the political powers have a lot to do with it.

Thanks for stopp[ing by.

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Ruby - millions of Christians accept the theory of evolution and still believe in God. All the mainline churches, s far as I know, officially accept the theory. Individual members might have problems with it, though, and that I can understand.

The fact is that evolution took place, and indeed continues. That of course has implications for how we read the creation account in Genesis. I'm sure God is big enough to deal with it!

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

William - thanks for taking that moment! I appreciate your comment and have to sadly agree with you - closed-mindedness is a human disease which could very well prove fatal, as you say. Keep writing your sane and caring Hubs and comments and maybe the light will not grow dimmer!

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Alek - thanks for stopping by. Indeed I experience you here on HubPages as being a searcher for knowledge!

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Sean - thanks for the comment. Popper made some great contributions to the philosophy of science. And Kuhn's work on paradigms is important.

Thanks for stopping by.

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Dali my friend, glad you found some of your favourites here! Thanks for coming by and commenting.

Love and peace

Tony

Petra Vlah

8 years agofrom Los Angeles

Fascinating hub dear Tony,

I believe that the starting point of any theory is the empiric observation which will later be proved or disproved by formal knowledge.

The fact that we do not understand (or refuse to accept certain theories) do not make them invalid; we are still affected by gravity whether we like it or not. Same goes for evolution, but not surprisingly some people will never see themselves as related to monkeys when it is so much more flattering to be related to God.

Eiddwen

8 years agofrom Wales

Fascinating hub Tony.

Thank you so much for sharing.

take care.

amillar

8 years agofrom Scotland, UK

I liked the rugby analogy Tony; there are rules, and there are theories. That makes sense. (I won't mention Maradona's "hand of God" theory/rule/excuse - oh dear, I just have.)

You make it very clear, and easy to follow, even for me.

Martie Coetser

8 years agofrom South Africa

Tony, you’ve really succeeded in summarizing the evolution theory versus other theories and Empirical knowledge versus formal knowledge perfectly in this hub. Personally I think Gen 1&2 is amazingly ‘accurate’ symbolic theories – metaphors. Like any other theory it cannot be proved as actual facts. We have to be open for new evidence ‘of truths’ – and in a way I regard truth as a synonym for God, which has been sadly personified since the beginning, therefore, I believe, people can not see beyond symbolic explanations or anything that is not human-like enough for them to understand. People prefer to stay put in their comfort zone of personal comprehension. We know there is ‘more out there’, and we should keep on searching for that ‘more’ still to be discovered. Knowledge makes me only more aware of the Awesome-Greatness-of-the-Universe – I don’t tie It to ID or Creationism anymore....

We merely have to analise the mind sets of people who lived 600 years ago to realize how our mind sets will be regarded twenty years ahead. I mean, torturing people, burning them alive, when they dare announce their interpretation of a phenomenon that was, unfortunately notated in the Bible in a symbolic manner by excellent inspirit (inspired) writers. I think it is only (real) writers who are able to distinguish between metaphors, biographies, fiction and non-fiction, and between background, theme, characters and the moral of the story.

I’ve bookmarked this suburb hub of yours. You’ve once again surprised me with a topic that is also on my list of interest. Not that I will try to cover this topic, or any other topic about science. It is an interest I have, but not yet dissected.

Did you read Gideons Joubert’s book “Die Groot Gedagte”. I’m not sure if it has been translated to English yet. This book won the Hertzog Price, or was it the Sanlam Price – can’t remember – for non-fiction about 4-5 years ago. Google it, you will find the topic very interesting.

Take care of yours and yourself!

Rob

8 years agofrom Oviedo, FL

Excellent Hub. So many great minds have struggled to create the field of science as we know it.

Sadly, though, it seems that science has come to a halt recently. When I was a kid, we thought that by the year 2000, we'd have flying cars, jet-packs and colonies on the moon.

We haven't changed much in the last 30 years, except for computers and other gadgets to transmit information. Science today is focused on expediency and the ability to do allow us to do anything without moving. We can make phone calls and get on the internet from anywhere. We can carry 10,000 songs with us in a tiny gadget. Very convenient. But why can't we cure cancer or AIDS?

When was the last time we cured a disease? The space program has stalled. (We don't go to the moon anymore and Mars is not on the agenda.) We're still using fossil fuels in our cars. We don't even have the Concord anymore!

In some ways, we're going backwards. More people believe in Creationism today than 10 years ago.

What's happening to science?

Ruby Jean Richert

8 years agofrom Southern Illinois

Tony, you write very informative hubs and very interesting, i might add. I have always wondered about life, God, The universe. What i hope is that God and evolution go hand-in-hand. Hopefully, we will find out the full truth someday.Thank you Tony,you are such a good writer.

Love and Peace

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Micky - I think you are right about the politician - most of them haven't crept out of the slime-pool yet! LOL

Thanks for the cool comment, my Brotherman.

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Joyus - thanks for the supportive words. I appreciate them very much. Darwin's theory is of course not the only one and it has already undergone some evolution itself, as scientific theories tend to do.

Thanks again

Love and peace

Tony

AUTHOR

Tony McGregor

8 years agofrom South Africa

Thanks for the comment Jimmy. I would ask that you don't put links to your Hubs in comments - it's a bad practice and contrary to the TOS of HubPages.

I did follow the link though and read your Hub, which was in the main long quotations from the KJV.

Thanks again

Love and peace

Tony

William R. Wilson

8 years agofrom Knoxville, TN

Great essay Tony! I'm glad I took a moment to come over and read it. I'm afraid that some of the people that we would most want to read and understand this will not bother, however. Close mindedness is a chronic disease of humanity, and it might yet prove terminal.

Nancy Hinchliff

8 years agofrom Essex Junction, Vermont

I really liked this, Tony, especially since I am one of the ones who is always searching for knowledge.

seanorjohn

8 years ago

Voted this up. What is truth? I can't remember the name of the philosopher who argued that instead of trying to continually find evidence to support a theory, researchers should instead subject the theory to a falsification test. I think it was a guy called Kuhn who also suggested that we never really arrive at anything but the best explanatory theory and that there will always be a new revolutionary theory round the corner. i know that it was generally accepted that newton's theory was accepted as absolute truth and it was certainly seen to be proved by aeroplanes flying. But then Einstein showed that newton had missed out some important stuff. So, although planes flew perfectly well under Newtonian laws it wasn't a scientific truth.

I remember that guy with the fasifiability test now, Karl Popper.

Wolfgang G. Greiner

8 years agofrom Germany

Thank you for your excellent Hub - there are nearly all my favourite scientists and artists collected: Galileo,Copernicus,Darwin,Newton,Botticelli etc... (d.48)

Micky Dee

8 years ago

Oh my Brother! I do believe in evolution. There is one creature that has never evolved and it never will. The politician will remain its miserable slimy existence. Great hub as always and always. Buttons up Magic Man BrotherMan!

Joyus Crynoid

8 years agofrom Eden

Excellent hub Tony. "As one who is not a scientist" you do a really nice job of explaining what science is all about. It is amazing how many folks just don't get it, even now in the 21rst century!

I will add that we can distinguish between the empirical fact of evolution, as revealed for example by fossils and DNA sequences (the evidentiary equivalent of Galileo's observations), and various theories of evolution, which try to explain the empirical fact. In Darwin's theory, evolution is explained by natural selection. Other theories exist, but Darwin's is still by far the most powerful (in terms of explanatory power), and hence the one that is overwhelmingly favored among biologists.

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